


Cappucino

by ayatsujik



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 16:35:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11809917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayatsujik/pseuds/ayatsujik
Summary: Jackal and Marui's Rikkai Story (with a lot of random food metaphors).





	Cappucino

**Author's Note:**

> 0) Repost to AO3 of an old story about Rikkai D2, slightly edited. 
> 
> 1) haafu - literally 'half'; i.e. of mixed ethnicity.
> 
> 2) 20.5 tells us Jackal's dad is currently jobless and that Marui goes to hotel buffets as a hobby. 
> 
> 3) Marui says "You're nice to meet" instead of "Nice to meet you" because he is a dork who goes "Chikuyoro", or a slang meaningless inversion of "yoroshiku" i.e. pleased to meet you. You get lame English reading because it's Konomi's fault, so there.

[one: the hunting of caffeine]  
  
His parents returned to Brazil after he was born in Tokyo. They visited Japan to see his paternal grandparents when he was a child, his mother says, but after they died only his father came here regularly.   
  
Early on Marui asks, curiously: don't you like coming back at all? Jackal shrugs and explains that 'coming back' is, strictly speaking, an inaccurate term. As far back as he recalls there has only been the sun and wind of coastal Brazil; when he stepped out of Narita Airport at the age of 14, fighting the chill of a Japanese spring (he hadn't thought to bring a beret, and the top of his head was freezing) he remembers nothing; feels nothing but the shivery excitement of being a stranger in a strange land, gripping his tennis duffel so hard his knuckles went white.  
  
The first couple of weeks in Japan - specifically in the school he enrolls in, the one with the strongest junior high tennis club in the Eastern Region - are a blur of people, pale-skinned and slight, and training sessions that leave him flat on his back at the end of the day. Jackal worked hard in Brazil under his old mentor, but he cannot recall being in an atmosphere so intense. This is worth it, he tells himself, and the knowledge brings a rush of satisfaction. This is what being with the champions is like.  
  
It helps to make up for his struggles off the court. His Japanese is still shaky; his father never spoke it at home and he only started learning the language half a year ago, after all. He learns to suppress the tingle of fear that assails him before he tries speaking to anyone, the resentment at the significant glances and condescension that some of them display, especially the older boys. He handles the infrequent confrontations in deserted corridors with an ease born of streetfighting in Rio de Janeiro. None of this is easy, despite all his earlier attempts to mentally prepare himself. Cultural assimilation is something he instinctively rejects; the stiff, precise formality of Japanese education makes him feel like he is being stifled, and Jackal loses count of the number of punishments he receives for being rude to seniors, unintentionally or otherwise.   
  
It doesn't matter, he mentally snarls. Not as long as I can beat them. This he does accomplish, a decent number of times, and the larger proportion of stares and whispers cease when he walks off after a victorious game.   
  
Jackal's skin colour makes him stand out wherever he goes - as does his prominent lack of hair.   
  
You have to realise, Marui later tells him, that in Japan baldness gets most currency with monks and gangsters (sorry, Jackal, I'm not much of a soccer fan).  
  
Amongst his yearmates he loses narrowly to a tall, thin boy with eyes permanently narrowed into slits, and another two who play doubles: a quiet one with glasses, and one with a silvery shock of hair topping a razor-edged smirk.  
  
He loses two entire matches, 5-0, to two people: a tanned boy with a cap, and another boy with the loveliest face Jackal has ever seen.  
  
\----  
  
Overall, he has to admit, Rikkai treats him fairly. Perhaps Yukimura and Sanada do most to guarantee this. Already during his second year a word of steely contempt from Sanada is enough to extinguish any xenophobic mischief in their club, even amongst the third-years. As for Yukimura, Jackal thinks he won't ever figure out how virtually the entire Rikkai team is at his feet - even the third-years - either through defeat on the court, or for other reasons that Jackal prefers not to consider. He likes *females* with white skin, he reminds himself grimly. (Still, it is hard not to feel vaguely oppressed when Yukimura arches an amused eyebrow at him over the canteen table.)  
  
But Yukimura takes Jackal under his wing from the day Jackal arrrives, overly dark and overly taciturn. And he smiles as he urges their yearmates to help him get used to life in Rikkai, everyone, shall we; a smile like sunlight on white orchids. Jackal isn't given to flowery rhetoric, doesn't even like flowery rhetoric, but it seems unavoidable where Yukimura is concerned - at least occasionally.   
  
After their match Sanada offers a hand in front of everyone, tersely complimenting Jackal's defensive play style, and Jackal knows that life in Rikkai's tennis club, at least, will be very bearable.  
  
\----  
  
He doesn't see Marui immediately. Yukimura tells him about an absent second-year who's been hospitalised for salmonella poisoning at a hotel buffet, and Jackal says, I see, there being nothing else he can say.  
  
"I think you'll get along with him," Yukimura says, a smile edging the corners of his mouth.   
  
Jackal nods politely, and lets this knowledge slide under the hectic press of schoolwork and training. It is seldom that he goes out, except on the occasions when Yukimura asks him to study with a few other of their yearmates; remedial lessons take up most of his free time anyway.  
  
So it is a shock when he comes to the courts one morning, so early that their clubhouse hasn't been unlocked yet, and sees an unfamiliar person in the Rikkai tennis uniform practicing serves on a nearby wall.  _Pock, pock, pock_ : the ball never stops kissing chipped slabs of brick, steady as a heartbeat. The boy is shorter than him, with an impossibly red mop of hair and skin almost as fair as Yukimura's, and as Jackal looks on a small green bubble of gum suddenly balloons out from between his closed lips, bursting in a couple of seconds.   
  
The ball flies back towards the boy, who catches it in his left hand, and Jackal is caught in an odd spasm of embarrassment when he turns. This discomfort only increases when he starts walking up to Jackal, stopping a hand's-length away from him.  
  
"Ah," Red-hair says after a moment's contemplation. His eyes, large and bright, are the colour of lavender. "So *you're* the  _haafu_  Yukimura's been talking about. I thought he was kidding when he said you were bald, though, guess I owe him cake now."  
  
Jackal blinks.  
  
"Marui Bunta, second-year, aiming to be a regular next season," the redhead continues, his voice a little muffled by the gum he's still chewing.   
  
Jackal watches the swell and pop of another sticky bubble, and a hand sticks itself out, small but long-fingered.   
  
Jackal looks down at the grin on Marui's face, and he grips it after a moment's hesitation.  
  
"You're nice to meet!" Marui chirps, his handshake quick and firm. "I hear from Sanada your defence is great; shall we see how it matches up against my genius play before practice begins? I was getting bored with the wall anyway."  
  
\----  
  
After that they play a number of times. Jackal finds himself relishing their games; Marui and him are fairly evenly matched (though Jackal's stamina is better), so winning or losing is hard to predict, and the number of victories they each have is roughly equal. Marui is lithe, agile, his serve-and-volley quick as lightning, and Jackal finds himself running faster, reaching out further, thinking of more ways to block his shots.  
  
Neither of them are at the level of the regulars yet, but eventually their practice games start attracting spectators, Sanada included, who watches them play with sharp, thoughtful eyes.  
  
"It's because Jackal swears funny Brazilian words when I score service aces," Marui cheerfully tells Yukimura, in-between popping a bubble of gum.   
  
Yukimura laughs, and Jackal throws Marui a look that is only half-annoyed.   
  
Yukimura, Jackal decides, was right. Marui is the only other person besides Yukimura who really talks to him: who doesn't mind being friendly, who unobtrusively passes over Jackal's carefully inflected Japanese. Who can make Jackal forget the differences of colour and upbringing. More and more he finds himself spending time with Marui, whether for schoolwork or for tennis, and the ease with which he can do this feels almost suspicious, as if he's about to be taken in by a feint.   
  
(But Marui smiles like he seems to mean it, wide and unguarded as a child, and gradually Jackal learns to accept this for what it is.)  
  
Jackal does not expect much from this country beyond a decent education and effective training. Despite its being encoded into half his genes, he does not think he will ever be really at home here, and does not expect to stay after high school. Just before he left his father talked about getting a sports scholarship from an American institution; Jackal nodded, promised to work hard, and watched his father's callused hands turn the pages of the classifieds with a faint lump in his throat.  
  
"Oh, America," Marui says dreamily when Jackal raises the topic, casually, in a cafe that Marui drags him to on a day when practice is cancelled.   
  
"It's worth aiming for," Jackal says. He takes a sip of his long espresso and manages not to wince at its insipid flavour. More than anything he misses the coffee of Rio - thick, laced with the potent bitterness of medicine, and leavened with chicory.   
  
"Isn't it, though? New York has *fantastic* cheesecake. And hot apple pie, and fudge sundaes, and - if I think about it anymore I'll just get hungry." Marui sighs, reaches for his cup, and gingerly empties four packets of sugar into his cafe latte.   
  
Jackal tries, unsuccessfully, not to twitch.  
  
\----  
  
Jackal tosses something to him one afternoon over the table they're doing homework at: a small rectangular box covered in bright orange wrapping.  
  
"What's this?" Marui asks, catching it with a deft flick of his wrist.   
  
"I got a package from my mother yesterday. It had too many sweets." Jackal fills in another blank on his English worksheet as fragile foil is ripped apart, and doesn't need to look to know Marui's eyes are shining. "I don't know if you'll like it, though -"  
  
"*Mmm*," Marui interrupts, swallowing the last of a marmalade square. "You can give me everything you can't eat, I didn't know Brazil had such good desserts. Hey - maybe I could visit next time?"   
  
Jackal glances up. "We'll see."  
  
"Aw," Marui wheedles. "It'd be fun. Come to think of it, I've never eaten Brazilian food before..."  
  
"Do your English, Marui."  
  
"Ch'," the other boy huffs. Out of the corner of his eye Jackal watches him twirl a pen in his fingers, the other hand absently tugging at his ear. It almost makes him smile.  
  
\----  
  
And Jackal keeps his head down and trains like a maniac: runs at five in the morning, barbell routines, circuit workouts. Once a week he phones his senior in Rio de Janeiro, the one he owes everything to, and tells him about life in Japan.  
  
"How many friends have you made this far?" the voice on the other end of the line teasingly inquires.  
  
Jackal glances over at his racket, and thinks of red hair and apple-green gum.  
  
"At least one," he says. "He's a little small."  
  
His mentor laughs heartily. "Make sure you don't lose him, then."  
  
"I don't plan to," Jackal replies, and after a few more words they hang up.  
  
====  
  
  
[two: let them eat cake]  
  
Jackal is dark, quiet and averse to sugar, as different from Marui as it is possible to be. And still Marui decides that he likes him.   
  
Maybe he likes Jackal because they differ in ways he can understand. He likes Jackal's low, careful speech; the dusky cocoa hue of Jackal's face beside his own fairness. He is secretly fascinated by the undersides of Jackal's large hands, the pinkish colour of sakura-flavoured mochi that is startling against his otherwise swarthy skin. Sunburns and a smattering of freckles are all Marui's ever gotten from trying to acquire a tan, his attempts leaving him raw pink and smarting for days. (When he complains about this Jackal says Marui's just fine the way he is, and what's so good about being dark anyway? Marui says, oh never mind, and both of them agree that the other is strange.)   
  
Jackal doesn't speak much to anyone except Yukimura and Marui, but then it is clear not many people want to talk to him in the first place. This, Yukimura counsels, is regrettable but natural, and things should improve with time. At least now people know his tennis skills are good.  
  
Marui doesn't care about anything except the fact that playing with Jackal is fun, a challenge not impossible to meet. He enjoys knowing that Jackal has to work to keep up with his serve-and-volley. Tennis with Jackal confirms the strengths of his own play, even as it pushes him to think, focus, react. Marui can't think of a game with him that he hasn't *enjoyed*, really and truly.   
  
"It's no fun playing with *you*," he tells Yukimura, only half-jokingly. "Or with Sanada, or with Yanagi either. The outcome's decided even before the game starts."  
  
"Then train until you can beat us," Yukimura says simply, his eyes more grey than blue. Marui is aware of tacit reproof seeping through the use of the imperative verb and the firm set of his friend's lips, and already he regrets his careless remark. In some respects Yukimura is more formidable than even Sanada could ever be.   
  
"You ought to know," Yukimura continues, "that Jackal, for one, works very hard."  
  
"...Sometimes he reminds me of Sanada without the scary face," Marui says at last, throwing himself back onto the grass. He *knows* that, he grudgingly thinks. Jackal leaves straight for the gym on days when practice ends early, firmly rejecting Marui's offers of ice cream and hamburgers. Jackal is reserved, focused, serious in a way that sometimes makes Marui feel inadequate, because Jackal so obviously makes this attitude the most basic expectation he has of himself.  
  
"Well, then," Yukimura says gently. "Are you going to let him become a regular without you?"  
  
Marui closes his eyes, luxuriating in the feel of sunlight warming his face.  
  
"I'd rather give up cake," he replies with utter sincerity, and feels rather than sees Yukimura's answering smile.  
  
\----  
  
They take to doing homework together. Marui likes having someone besides Yukimura to pester about the mysteries of English grammar; it is even better that he can give Jackal help with kanji and honorific forms in return, although Marui is forced to admit that Jackal's Japanese is on the whole better than his English (Maybe, Jackal says without the least hint of irony in his voice, that's because he actually does *his* homework.)   
  
But Marui is basically fond of proportion: cake slices should be cut just so, neither too small nor too big to finish in a few mouthfuls, and nothing irritates him more than fruit pieces unevenly distributed within baked goods. Jackal and him have acknowledged uses for each other, and that's fine with them both.  
  
When Jackal asks why he was hospitalised earlier on, Marui says, laconically, "Food poisoning."  
  
"And how did that happen?"  
  
"There's this hotel in Yokohama that serves really good seafood lunch buffets on weekends, see, and one Sunday I went I think their clams weren't too fresh...not that I won't go again, actually, even if I don't eat clams their baked lobster is unbelievable. Do you want to try it?"  
  
"No," says Jackal. Marui mumbles a comment referencing the incredible monotony of Jackal's dietary existence, and ignores the Look that Jackal trains upon him.  
  
\----  
  
Jackal also asks, in so many words, why his mouth is perpetually inhabited by a stick of gum, and Marui shrugs, saying, "I like it."  
  
It's the truth. He loves the sweet stickiness of gum around his teeth, and green apple flavour's got a tinge of sourness that gets him awake in the morning; the chewing motions also keep him alert both in class and on the court. Besides, blowing gum bubbles is fun, fragile balloons that pop and swell as often as he wants them to. Marui tells this to Jackal, albeit rather incoherently, and sees Jackal nod even as his brow furrows.   
  
Marui doesn't expect Jackal to understand the joys of chewing gum or eating, and doesn't really need him to. For his part, Jackal's told him that he shaves his head in honour of his senior in Brazil, and Marui, if only because he finds it impossible to imagine wanting to be bald, doesn't pretend to understand that either.   
  
It's enough that they know.  
  
\----  
  
Their coach installs cooler boxes in their clubhouse during the summer, one for the use of members from each year. During a break in one blazing afternoon Marui flops down on a bench, sweat-soaked towel hanging limply around his neck. Jackal comes in a moment later, absently running a hand over his head, which, Marui notices, is covered with new hair like the fuzz on a peach, only black.   
  
He dabs at another bead of sweat trickling into his collar, watching Jackal removes a small Tupperware from the second-years' box with languid curiosity.   
  
"What's that?" he asks through the crack of the plastic lid being popped off.  
  
Jackal pads over to him and holds out a hand. In his fingers is a thick lemon slice, its translucent yellow pulp a cool, glistening invitation.  
  
_Ah_ , Marui gleefully exclaims, and it doesn't occur to him to think before he performs his next action. Later on he will protest that he was tired, that the lemon was *there*, and what did Jackal expect by waving it in front of his face anyway? But now he swoops his head down to Jackal's hand, taking the lemon slice (and accidentally, momentarily, the rough cocoa-brown tips of Jackal's fingers) into his mouth, sucking on the puckery sourness of the fruit with thorough pleasure. Marui arches his head back against the wall to let the sharp juices run down his throat, and thinks, this is *good*; Jackal has the best ideas.   
  
When he opens his eyes Jackal is bent over the cooler at the other end of the room, replacing the box of lemons amongst ice chunks, and his voice when Marui asks him for another slice is funny: a little higher than normal, a little unfocused, telling Marui to get another slice himself if he wants it. Marui is vaguely affronted, but he lets Jackal's brusqueness slide. It's too hot to argue.  
  
(Afterwards Jackal says, only half-exasperated, you *never* use your brain when it comes to food.  
  
Do you have a problem with that? Marui counters.  
  
...You do what you want, Jackal mutters, and Marui admires the sudden strawberry tint that glazes his cheeks with some bemusement.)  
  
\----  
  
Marui remembers many things that neither he nor Jackal talks about - the private conditioning sessions that Marui starts, for instance, his conversation with Yukimura still fresh in his mind. He recalls holding a hand out during a homework session, asking Jackal to lend him a ruler, and then hearing a surprised grunt at the blisters on his palm, broken and reddish underneath clear flaps of skin.   
  
He observes Jackal take his hand with a movement that is half vague, studying it the way Marui's seen his little brothers study caterpillars they pluck from leaves.  
  
"It's nothing," Marui says dismissively, and Jackal starts, dropping his hand with the abruptness of a person being scalded.  
  
"I see," Jackal finally says, and Marui meets his eyes, amused and faintly challenging.  
  
It quickly turns into a contest of sorts. One day a mustard plaster appears on Jackal's upper arm; two days later Marui has a guard on one wrist. Jackal says nothing when Marui begins going to the gym with him, and they do their workouts in near-silence, neither leaving until they get chased out by the PE teachers at closing time.  
  
Within a few months both of them have started wearing weights on their ankles and wrists when they play against each other.   
  
\----  
  
Soon their games are even more closely matched than before, the element of unpredictability stronger. Marui notes the larger crowd that gathers when they play, now, and lets his satisfaction manifest in a smirk. Marui thinks tennis really is a *game*, something that becomes meaningless without one deriving pleasure from it. Simplify, simplify is what he believes; it comes down to the  _pock_  of a ball thudding into his racket's sweet spot, the shivery exultation of a volley culminating in a shot that scores, and the murmurs of admiring disbelief from the spectators outside the court. This is why he plays: for the giving and receiving of entertainment, for a sugar rush incarnated into a more volatile, more intense form.  
  
Yukimura always watches, pale and lovely beside Sanada's forbidding figure, and smiles when Marui waves his racket to him.  
  
\----  
  
Then there's the day when the new list of regulars for the Rikkai tennis club is announced.   
  
Jackal, in an utterly uncharacteristic display of sentiment, grabs Marui in a headlock. And Marui lets himself be half-choked by a sinewy brown arm, observing with interest the first real smile he's ever seen on his friend's face. (You don't do it enough, he remarks later, as casually as if he were talking about an ice-cream flavour, and doesn't know why Jackal turns away in embarrassment.)  
  
When Sanada, in his role as their new vice-captain, announces that he and Jackal are to play doubles, it is less of a shock than it should be. Marui blinks, letting out a breath, and sneaks a look a Jackal to confirm his similar lack of reaction.   
  
\----  
  
Maybe they've seen this coming. In retrospect, he thinks, they must have held a sliver of expectation at the edges of their consciousness. Yukimura says, his smile a study in meaning, that they work too well together for the potential not to be obvious, and Marui knows Yukimura knows, even if nobody knows *how* Yukimura knows.   
  
Marui doesn't mind this at all. It only promises even more fun than they've had up till now. Lately he's been considering a new move, a crumb of an idea that broke off from what Jackal has told him about tightrope walkers in Brazilian circuses; it has to do with the thin white line that is the top of the net, and a great deal of control over his racket swing. Eventually he will practice this balancing act on Jackal when he perfects it, and watch the look on his face, stunned at Marui's brilliance. That will also be fun.  
  
Somehow he doesn't think Jackal minds being his partner, either.


End file.
